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3.
Altmetrics: definitions
•
•
term coined by Jason Priem
introduced as a better filter
than and alternative to
citations and peer-review
http://altmetrics.org/manifesto/
•
“…altmetrics is a good idea,
but a bad name”
“…we would like to propose
the term influmetrics”
Rousseau & Ye (2013)
•
•
rather complementary than
alternative to citations
social media metrics

8.
Altmetrics: definitions
• complex to define and classify tools and motivations
•
•
scientific and non-scientific audiences cannot be
determined on the platform used
level of engagement differs not only between
platforms but also within:
saving paper to Mendeley library vs. tweeting about it
saving vs. reading
retweeting link vs. discussing content
 differentiation between audiences and engagement
needed to determine meaning of metrics

9.
Bibliometrics: in retrospect
• when Garfield created SCI, sociologists of science
analyzed meaning of publications and citations
(Merton, Zuckerman, Cole & Cole, etc.)
• sociological research
• What is it to publish a paper?
• What are the reasons to cite?
• empirical bibliometric research
• disciplinary differences in publication
•
and citation behavior
delay and obsolescence patterns

10.
Bibliometrics: in retrospect
• empirical studies helped sociologists to understand
structure and norms of science
• for bibliometricians, studies provided a theoretical
framework and legitimation to use citation analysis
in research evaluation
• knowledge about disciplinary differences and
obsolescence patterns helped to normalize statistics
and create more appropriate indicators

11.
Bibliometrics: in retrospect
• similar to development of SCI in the 1960s, social
media metrics have to be analyzed:
• qualitative studies to analyze who, how and why
•
people use various social media platforms
large-scale quantitative studies to determine
differences and biases in terms of disciplines, topics,
document types, publications years, publication types
and sources, author age and affiliation, etc.
 to find out what various social media metrics mean
and what they can be used for

19.
Altmetrics: disciplinary biases
x-axis:
coverage of
specialty on
platform
y-axis:
correlation
between social
media counts
and citations
bubble size:
intensity of use
based on mean
social media
count rate

20.
Altmetrics: subject bias
General Biomedical Research papers 2011
Scatterplot of number of citations and number of tweets (A, ρ=0.181**) and Mendeley readers (B, ρ=0.677**),
bubble size represents number of Mendeley readers (A) and tweets (B). The respective three most tweeted (A)
and read (B) papers are labeled showing the first author.

22.
Altmetrics: future
• before applying social media counts in information
retrieval and research evaluation, we need:
 to understand and define meaning of various
social media metrics
 to identify different biases
 to differentiate between audiences and
level of engagement
 more transparency and reliability in data aggregation